2. Louie

Louis CK’s half-hour weekly movie is one of the few wholly surprising things on television. Week to week, it can be just about anything: rawly funny or poignantly dramatic; scatological or psychological; a collection of vignettes or a single, three-episode-long story. The third season took the title character, a comedian and divorced dad, on journeys of self-discovery — be it a lost weekend in Miami, a bizarre and emotionally draining date, a quest to take over David Letterman’s job or, in the finale, a surreal but moving solo journey to China. At once darkly funny and unembarrassedly sentimental, this truly one-of-a-kind show was a 13-episode argument for engaging with the world, as tough as the world sometimes makes it. (FX)